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Volume drop when exporting

Posted: November 12th, 6:21 am
by Miker
Why is the volume lower on an exported file than it is in the daw file?

And how do I adjust it?

Thanks!

Re: Volume drop when exporting

Posted: December 5th, 1:36 am
by pwnified
The mixdown will be normalized to be as loud as possible without clipping (actually 0.5 dB below Full Scale). So if it sounds louder when playing back in multitrack, it's because the OUT fader is probably a bit too high and clipping into the red. If you lower the OUT fader so that it never clips into the red then the volumes should match. The OUT fader will have no effect on the mixdown volume.

What happens commonly, is that there is a loud sound on one of the tracks, maybe even a brief transient sound like a drum hit, which causes everything to be reduced to keep this sound from clipping the mixdown. If you can find it, maybe trim it out and/or lower the volume on just that portion.

You can also use the Main effects to add a compressor and maybe a brickwall limiter to the mastering plugin chain, to get back some volume.